


He called me that night

by 8isgreat



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27119401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8isgreat/pseuds/8isgreat
Summary: Connor stood up. He knew he wasn’t supposed to. He wasn’t the lawyer today, he was the client. Oh well.“Tell me the truth, Chloe,” he pleaded, voice wavering, his left hand clutching his trousers. “… Please.”--Set after season 6, a little piece of what I imagine for Connor's retrial. Annalise brings a surprise witness to the stand. Chloe reveals the truth about why Asher called her that fateful night.[SPOILERS FOR s6][CW: talk of suicide]
Relationships: Asher Millstone & Connor Walsh
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	He called me that night

Connor stood up. He knew he wasn’t supposed to. He wasn’t the lawyer today, he was the client. Oh well.

“Tell me the truth, Chloe,” he pleaded, voice wavering, his left hand clutching his trousers in a death grip. “… Please.”

Chloe looked up, met his eyes.

“When I screamed that you killed Asher in court… I believed … you did,” Chloe pushed out, with effort. “Because… because…!”

“Because…?” Annalise prodded gently.

Chloe was shaking her head, sniffling, hiccuping a bit.

“Chloe,” said Annalise. “You have nothing left to protect. Your family’s already disgraced, with no other members left to protect. But even if you don’t care about your family name, even if you don’t care about the innocent man wrongly accused beside me, would Asher have wanted this?”

Chloe nodded.

“Because… because I thought Asher asked you to!!!” she ejected.

_...What?_

“Like he had asked me to.”

The prosecutor opened his mouth, but closed it.

“I had to agree to what he said, or he wouldn’t tell me what it was, but I was gonna …. zdop him… so of course, he would turn to … the friends that c...govered up his murder… he… drusded them… and I was so angry… that they’d actually help him do it…”

“Answer the question, Chloe,” Annalise demanded, gently but insistently. “Was he or was not going to kill himself that night?”  
  
“Yes. He was going to kill himself.”

_No…_

“He called me the night he died, I was at the club, drunk. He needed me to drive him back, he needed to say his last words to mom before we did it. I was going to make sure he didn’t do it. I told him I’d be right there… My license was suspended... but I took a friend’s car. I was speeding, not going straight. I was pulled over… I thought I still had time…”

How had he not seen it? Tears gathered in the rims of Connor’s eyes. He had a choice. He let them out.

In fact, he urged them forward. _It’s my fault,_ he reminded himself. 

Because he knew they would help his case. Yes, let them pour. But they weren’t fake. It’s easy to “act” when it’s not actually fake.

“… but I didn’t have time. By the time I got back… he was … dead… and I was told the FBI had taken in his accomplice-friends as suspects.”

At this point, Connor could not have stopped the tears if he wanted to. 

_Why,_ Connor demanded silently to Annalise,  _did you not warn me?!!_

“Chloe,” said Annalise. “How did Asher want to die? Tell us. Did he want to be stabbed repeatedly with a rusty fireplace poker on his stairwell?”

“No. The rope,” said Chloe. “Like Dad. Because it’s Dad’s fault. It’s all our faults. It’s my fault for convincing him to betray his friends. It’s Mom’s fault for telling him why Dad killed himself.”

“The prosecution says my client killed Asher for being a mole,” Annalise said. “My client, a law student at the time, surely knew how stupid it would be to kill an FBI informant. But Chloe, wasn’t that why Asher wanted to kill _himself_?”

Connor turned around to see that, despite all the words they had had, Michaela was sitting next to Oliver. Her ever pursed lips finally broke as she began clutching Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver was staring, stone-faced, mouth hanging slightly open. His eyes shifted slowly from Chloe toward Connor. Oliver looked like he thought was in a dream. Maybe it felt like he was, Connor figured. Connor snapped his head back around.

“...Yes,” said Chloe. “He’d been suicidal since killing ADA Sinclair. But what pushed him over the edge was having to choose between betraying his family, and betraying his friends. Asher was always so loyal. That was why he begged Mom and Dad to make Tiffany shut up, because he just couldn’t stand seeing his friends in trouble, even if they deserved it…

“But,” she continued, “he told me… if he died, it’d all go away. The FBI would have no reason to blackmail Mom, and he thought he deserved to die anyways, for Tiffany, for ...”

Connor couldn’t take hearing it anymore. He sank into his chair, letting out a high pitched sort of gasp as his contorted face pressed into his arm. He probably looked demented, he figured.

And then Annalise was off again, reminding the jury of the sheer unlikelihood that he would choose to stab Asher with the same poker Oliver had hit him with, and more importantly, all that bullshit about what a “good friend” he was to Asher, letting him stay over after his dad died, as if that made up for all the awful things he had said, and all the things he had not said, and not done.

Such utter bullshit. It was true that Asher had always supported _him_ , but he was not the “good friend” Annalise was describing. He had always looked down at Asher, had rolled his eyes often. He had never really treated Asher as an equal. _I can’t help being such an asshole._

 _Yeah,_ _Asher had always made sure to include_ me _, he was there for_ me, _but_ I _refused to let Asher stay in Laurel’s room_ _, when he needed us the most_.

Asher had (unfortunately) tried his best to make sure Connor’s birthday was always great, his bachelor’s party was great, and Connor still couldn’t even remember when Asher’s birthday was, even now. _And I was only told like ninety times._

_Asher was always there for me, and I didn’t even have a clue!_

_Because all I cared about was me. Me hating me, that was about me. I had no time to care for Asher, even when I put him up after his dad died, I was just_ _this fucking_ _parasite off of him!,_ _putting him up but talking about how he_ _was_ _annoying behind his back,_ _trying to feel better about myself,_ _but still being the little fucking shit I am, that I can’t escape_ _. And the whole time…_ _I…_

_If I keep this up,_ Connor thought wryly as he realized his fist was pressed into the table, _the trial to put me in an insane asylum will start._ He was quite certain he looked completely deranged. Or maybe the jury would just think that was what a grief they had never experienced looked like.

“It’s all my fault,” Chloe sobbed.

_No,_ Connor  thought, his fist slamming into the table inadvertently .  _It’s mine._

And then Connor realized –  _this_ was the plan all along.  _This_ was why Annalise hadn’t told him. Because she wanted  _this_ to be spontaneous. And  _this_ was also why she was saying all this crap.  _Because she wants me to ugly cry, pound my fist like a baby, maybe I’ll even get to wailing like a_ _freaking_ _lunatic, so they’ll see my grief…_ He looked up at the jury. It was  actually working. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I really do appreciate comments, let me know what you think.


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